Turfshoe:Breaking Bad did it pretty blatantly too with Chrysler. They had a damn minute of Walt and Jr. sitting in the driveway rocking out and revving the engines on their new cars. The whole time I sat there wondering how Jr. was going to eat his breakfast in the car without making a mess.

Which came after a minute of the mechanic talking up how great of a car Walt's old Chrystler was, with the logo in the center of the screen the whole time.

burndtdan:Turfshoe: Breaking Bad did it pretty blatantly too with Chrysler. They had a damn minute of Walt and Jr. sitting in the driveway rocking out and revving the engines on their new cars. The whole time I sat there wondering how Jr. was going to eat his breakfast in the car without making a mess.

Which came after a minute of the mechanic talking up how great of a car Walt's old Chrystler was, with the logo in the center of the screen the whole time.

Turfshoe:Breaking Bad did it pretty blatantly too with Chrysler. They had a damn minute of Walt and Jr. sitting in the driveway rocking out and revving the engines on their new cars. The whole time I sat there wondering how Jr. was going to eat his breakfast in the car without making a mess.

Yes, but that scene looked and sounded awesome! I just watched it again on youtube to make sure.

It's got the return of the porkpie hat, the end of the Aztec, the reminder of how lame Skylar is with that stupid PT Cruiser*, and Walt finally having the balls (after having had to return/blow up the previous car) to say "Fark it, I'm gonna enjoy this money, and so is my son**!"

*I suppose the scene even doubles as a reminder to viewers that Chrysler isn't making shiatbox PT Cruisers anymore, too.** It's a special edition Challenger for the show: comes with custom cup bowl-holders.

whizbangthedirtfarmer:Fringe was guilty of promoting Ford and their little Microsoft Sync system a few times. The episode where Peter Bishop goes to the Northeast, that was the focus of the entire opening segment.

That kind of goes back to my earlier point with Bones. Why are these super geniuses who see the unbelievable every day be amazed with a voice recognized mp3 player?

burndtdan:Turfshoe: Breaking Bad did it pretty blatantly too with Chrysler. They had a damn minute of Walt and Jr. sitting in the driveway rocking out and revving the engines on their new cars. The whole time I sat there wondering how Jr. was going to eat his breakfast in the car without making a mess.

Which came after a minute of the mechanic talking up how great of a car Walt's old Chrystler was, with the logo in the center of the screen the whole time.

Zombie DJ:Vexed Thespian: Zombie DJ: SUBWAY has to be the worst to work with.It's Always Sunny In Philly has showed them a few times also.

wow. what a waste of advertisement. i love the show, have all seasons on dvd and watch it all the time. i cant think of a single use of subway.

They talked it up pretty good on where Dennis and Deandra should meet their high school sweethearts.Then they went and met them at Subway.They mentioned it a couple more times in that particular show. It just felt weird.

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That one and when Dee was giving birth. She leaves the hospital (after her water already broke) to go get a large drink and sandwich. Exactly the time to be drinking sugar water and chowing down on a sub.

Silverstaff:As bad as those are, think of the ones that are so bad they never made it to air.

Back in the late '60's, it was still legal to advertise tobacco on TV. One of the major tobacco companies (I don't recall which one) was a sponsor of Star Trek.

They gave significant pressure to Gene Roddenberry wanting product placement. They sent memos to him strongly suggesting that Spock smoke "space cigarettes", and feature a product shot of one of their packs, and have him comment on how logical smoking is.

Roddenberry put his foot down on that.

Yeah, there were worse product placements that never made it to air.

That would have been better than "Deathsticks" in the Star Wars Prequels. Oh God, I can't believe I suppressed that peculiar moment.

FirstNationalBastard:And NBC Sunday Night Football's opening theme video makes it look like it's the Verizon show instead of football. The only thing missing is Faith Hill hiking up her miniskirt and farking herself with a large Verizon logo-shaped dildo until she squirts Verizon logos.

I remember a particularly bad one in Alias. Nadia is in the car with Jack after she just woke up from a coma she had been in for a year and makes a comment about him finally getting a hybrid. It just felt so incredibly out of place.

Subway seems to have the worst product placement team. Pawn Stars has awful setups that are obvious and poorly-acted by those four rotund gentlemen. And the blatant corporate ad copy in Hawaii 5-0? FFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU!! The dialog should have been something short like "Dude, Jared didn't lose weight eating five footlongs", and fat dude counter with "But they're so good!", and moved the scene along.

And for most of the others, when will the douchebag corporate marketing guys learn it will work better if the logo isn't so dramatically perfect and centered, like it took ten minutes to set up the shot? It goes a lot further if you give the viewer the impression they found an Easter egg with an off-kilter logo showing seven-eighths of the product.

Tax Boy:Wasn't there a modern family episode that was entirely about buying an ipad? And the episode aired on the first day ipads were available for order?

when i watched it on dvd, it seemed plausible. something that really happened around the country (husbands getting their wives stupid overpriced shiat.....i did it too) but knowing WHEN the episode came out, leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.

and there was another episode early in the series (the opnly one i actually saw) where one guy tells the other all of the features of the iphones auto correct and "if you turn it sideways, the keyboard gets bigger"

FirstNationalBastard:propasaurus:And NBC Sunday Night Football's opening theme video makes it look like it's the Verizon show instead of football. The only thing missing is Faith Hill hiking up her miniskirt and farking herself with a large Verizon logo-shaped dildo until she squirts Verizon logos.

Still wouldn't make up for "music" and Collinsworth, but it'd be a start.

Shadowknight:Zombie DJ: All I know is, when Hawaii 5-0 says: "Hang on. Let me Bing it.", I want to lunch a baby in the face.NO ONE SAYS BING IT!NO ONE WILL EVER SAY BING IT!STOP TRYING TO MAKE UP SAYINGS!

Me and my friends have been known to say "Hold on while I Bing it.". Then we all start laughing as we bring up Google and move on.

I despise Bing so much that I purposefully block it on my Sonic Wall's.

FuryOfFirestorm:EngineerAU: Smallville was pretty bad about it. Having Alienware computers around was amusing but the Yaris commercials were terrible. I think the actors intentionally did a poor job in order to keep from having to do more of them. Same with Being Erica's Ford Focus commercial in one episode.

The worst was the episode where one of Clark's friends gets stretching powers from chewing Stride Gum laced with Kryptonite. Seriously.

I loved that episode BECAUSE the product placement was so blatant. That's pretty much Stride's style when they do product placement, and it's always so over-the-top that it's great.

Their best placement was in the short-lived series "The Loop." Stride sponsored a gate at the airport and everyone hated it because it was too annoying. (Passengers who could blow the biggest bubble got priority seating.) It was one of their best episodes.

So I love it when Stride gets involved. And I'm right there with you on wasting 10 years on Smallville. But to me, it wasn't a waste. I think we all need that one TV guilty pleasure, and that was my show for a decade. (I'm actually enjoying Arrow, but it better not get too good or they're going to cancel it.)

I am kind of ok with burn notice doing that kind of thing. Budgets for cable shows are usually really low compared to network tv. So if they have to throw in some product placement and that means they can shoot a couple more episodes per season, or have a couple more explosions or pay Bruce Campbell more, then to me its totally worth it.

ModernPrimitive01:I don't watch a lot of t.v. but this season's Son's of Anarchy have been pushing Harley cycles more than ever, to the point there is a motorcycle chase in every episodes where the bikes are prominently shown. It's gratuitous

Sons of Anarchy has always been a Harley ad, with all the club members riding the same model. For this season, it was announced that Sons was going to feature some other brands, like Victory. Harley dropped a nut and whined, and then threw a whole bunch of money at the show to keep it Harley only. That's why they have a commercial in every show now.

mechgreg:Zombie DJ: Also, BURN NOTICE was becoming a car ad for a while.

I am kind of ok with burn notice doing that kind of thing. Budgets for cable shows are usually really low compared to network tv. So if they have to throw in some product placement and that means they can shoot a couple more episodes per season, or have a couple more explosions or pay Bruce Campbell more, then to me its totally worth it.

I feel like the show has gotten really desperate for the "spy advice" segments. They've gone through most of the interesting MacGuyver-type things in the first few seasons. Now they're stuck talking about how great their car is. As much as I liked Burn Notice, since it's basically this decade's A-Team, the show has almost become a parody of itself at this point.

DjangoStonereaver:WHITE COLLAR does this quite a lot, though they seem to have a way of making it obvious that itsa product plug without it being too intrusive. For example: Peter and Neal were having an intenseconversation while driving in NY traffic, and when Peter (who was driving) got distracted he got tooclose to the car ahead of him and the automatic brakes went on. He mentioned the feature and thenwent on with the scene, but it actually served to accentuate the conversation they were having. Italmost seemed natural, in point of fact.

As long as the producers promise to give us more Marsha Thomason scenes in exchange for the ads, I'm ok with this.